{"id":3055,"date":"2024-10-22T15:09:22","date_gmt":"2024-10-22T15:09:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thug-attorneys-contempt-order-reversed-by-georgia-supreme-court\/"},"modified":"2024-10-22T15:09:22","modified_gmt":"2024-10-22T15:09:22","slug":"young-thug-attorneys-contempt-order-reversed-by-georgia-supreme-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/young-thug-attorneys-contempt-order-reversed-by-georgia-supreme-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Young Thug Attorney’s Contempt Order Reversed By Georgia Supreme Court"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\n

\n\tYoung Thug<\/a>\u2019s attorney Brian Steel<\/strong> has won a ruling at the Georgia Supreme Court overturning a trial judge\u2019s controversial decision to hold the lawyer in criminal contempt earlier this year amid the rapper\u2019s ongoing Atlanta gang trial.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a decision Tuesday, the state\u2019s top court reversed Judge Ural Glanville<\/strong>\u2019s June contempt ruling, in which he had sentenced Steel to 20 days in jail for refusing to reveal how he\u2019d learned of a secret meeting between the judge and prosecutors \u2013 an incident that later saw Glanville removed from the case.<\/p>\n

\n\tGiven that Glanville\u2019s presence at the secret meeting was directly involved in the dispute with Steel, the Supreme Court ruled that he should have recused himself and allowed another judge to decide the attorney\u2019s fate.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe exchange between Steel and Judge Glanville makes clear that Judge Glanville was involved in the controversy,\u201d the high court wrote in its ruling. \u201cFor these reasons, a different judge should have presided over the contempt hearing, and the failure to do so requires reversal.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThug (Jeffery Williams<\/strong>) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his \u201cYSL\u201d was not really a record label called \u201cYoung Stoner Life\u201d but rather a violent Atlanta gang called \u201cYoung Slime Life.\u201d Citing Georgia\u2019s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) law, prosecutors claim the group operated a criminal enterprise that committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.<\/p>\n

\n\tMonths into the massive trial, Steel alerted Judge Glanville in early June that he had learned of a secret \u201cex parte\u201d meeting that morning between the judge, prosecutors and a witness named Kenneth Copeland<\/strong>. Steel argued that such a meeting, without defense counsel present, had potentially involved coercion of a witness and was clear grounds for a mistrial.<\/p>\n

\n\tRather than address Steel\u2019s complaints, Glanville instead repeatedly demanded that he divulge who had informed him about a private meeting in his chambers, suggesting the leak was illegal: \u201cIf you don\u2019t tell me how you got this information, you and I are going to have problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Steel refused to comply, Glanville held him in contempt and sentenced him to 20 days to be served over ten consecutive weekends. After Steel filed an appeal, the Supreme Court put the sentence on pause until it was able issue its decision.<\/p>\n

\n\tGlanville argued that the ex parte meeting had been entirely proper and repeatedly refused requests to step down from the case. But in July, after he referred the case to another judge, Judge Glanville was ordered to step aside over concerns about how the incident would impact the \u201cpublic\u2019s confidence in the judicial system.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe bizarre episode, which resulted in weeks-long delay before Judge Paige Reese Whitaker<\/strong> took over, was slow-down in a massive trial that is already the longest in Georgia state history<\/a>. It took an unprecedented 10-month process just to pick a jury, and the case has also been halted by the stabbing of another defendant and other unusual events.<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile the slow-moving trial has dragged on, Thug has been sitting in jail for more than two years, repeatedly denied bond by both judges to handle the case over fears that he might intimidate witnesses. Prosecutors have only presented part of their vast list of potential witnesses, and the trial is expected to run well into 2025.<\/p>\n

\n\tLast month, Whitaker appeared to reach her wits\u2019 end with the prosecutors trying the case \u2014 complaining of \u201cpoor lawyering, \u201cbaffling\u201d decisions and steps to repeatedly \u201chide the ball\u201d amid a \u201chaphazard\u201d trial: \u201cI don\u2019t know if I can stress any more than I already have how much the state\u2019s lawyers need to make an effort to be upfront and forthright in the trial of this case.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Young Thug\u2019s attorney Brian Steel has won a ruling at the Georgia Supreme Court overturning a trial judge\u2019s controversial decision to hold the lawyer in criminal contempt earlier […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3056,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[93,1571,143,484,1574,3856,533,1095,1094],"class_list":["post-3055","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawyers","tag-attorneys","tag-contempt","tag-court","tag-georgia","tag-order","tag-reversed","tag-supreme","tag-thug","tag-young"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usatrustedlawyers.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}